Despite the atrocities inflicted upon Palestinians in Gaza since Israel’s genocidal Operation Protective Edge started on July 8, and despite Israel’s deadliest assault on Gaza over the weekend, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is steadfast in upholding his history of collaborative efforts with settler-colonialist and imperialist dictates. The earliest plans for a Zionist colonization of…
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A message to the Palestinian Authority: persecuting Palestinian journalists aids the colonial occupation
Last May, when the media was concentrated upon the collective hunger strike in Israeli jails organised by Marwan Barghouti, another hunger strike initiated by Hamza Zablah went largely unnoticed. Zablah, a former prisoner for Hebron, was been detained by the Palestinian Authority security services and despite an order being signed for his release, his detention…
BOOK REVIEW: Close to the Edge
Reviewed: Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global Hip Hop Generation, By Sujatha Fernandes (New York: Verso, 2011) Through a journey spanning Sydney, Havana, Caracas and Chicago, sociologist and author Sujatha Fernandes explores the narrations of hip hop culture across the globe in her new book,Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global…
Palestinian leaders excel in political humiliation
Reading through the litanies spouted by Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), it is difficult to find an instance in which the rhetoric does not evoke contradictions. Erekat, who was part of a delegation travelling to Washington ahead of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s meeting with his US counterpart, Donald Trump, managed…
A Repressive Status Quo
Chile’s president-elect, Sebastian Piñera of the right-wing party Renovación Nacional (National Renewal, RN) recently announced that he plans to “modernize” the country’s Anti-Terrorist Law when he takes office. This announcement builds on promises from throughout his 2017 Chilean electoral campaign, when Piñera said on multiple occasions that his new aministration would seek to perfect the law, which…
Chilean Australians Clamor for the Extradition to Chile of Former DINA Agent Adriana Rivas
Groups of Chilean activists living in Australia are mounting a campaign for the extradition of an alleged torturer: former Dirección de Intelligencia Nacional (DINA) agent Adriana Rivas. Rivas is wanted by the Chilean courts in connection with the disappearance of Partido Comunista and Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionario (MIR) militants. The former agent has been living…
Forty Years Later, Justice for Víctor Jara: School of the Americas Grads Indicted in Murder of the Popular Allende-Era Singer/Activist
The move to extradite Florida resident Pedro Barrientos Nunez in connection with the murder of famed Chilean singer Victor Jara – a supporter of deposed President Salvador Allende – is re-igniting Chile’s campaign for justice for victims of the Pinochet regime’s reign of torture and violence. The US-backed military coup in Chile on September 11,…
Declassified documents reveal US role in Argentina’s “Dirty War”
Stories of the torture, murder and disappearance of political opponents in US-backed South American dictatorships resurfaced again recently, with the declassification of documents revealing, among other issues, US knowledge of the multinational campaign of state terror known as Operation Condor. Dr Carolina Villella, a lawyer from the organisation Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, Grandmothers of the…
Will Australia extradite former torturer Adriana Rivas to face justice?
During General Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship, one of the most notorious places for political dissidents to end up was Cuartel Simon Bolivar. It was here, in the extermination centre known as “the place where no one got out alive” that Adriana Rivas, a former National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) agent and personal secretary to DINA Chief…
Will the errors of Chile’s left facilitate a right-wing victory?
If he were still alive, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet might have voted for right-wing candidate Jose Antonio Kast, who seemed intent on provocation with his incessant, belligerent statements during the electoral campaign. In October 2017, Kast took a shot at former President Salvador Allende, calling him a “dictator,” and absolving the Chilean military of its role in the…
RAMONA WADI 